Over the past week, I went to three museums in Pittsburgh: the Phipps Conservatory, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. I greatly enjoyed all three, finding them both entertaining and enlightening.
My favorite was the Conservatory, which gave me a renewed fascination with plants. There were too many great exhibits there to discuss in one blog post, but among my favorites were their orchid room and the butterfly hot house. I understand now why people become obsessed with orchids, as they are among the most beautiful things I have ever seen. The variety of colors was truly amazing.
The butterflies were also beautiful. They were allowed to fly around the hot house interacting with their environment, feeding off the flowers. I actually watched a butterfly stick its proboscis into a flower, feeding itself and pollinating the flower at the same time. You had to be careful walking around for fear of stepping on a butterfly.
They also had a great exhibit on the plants of India. They mainly focused on Southern India, which is a lot wetter and has some beautiful plant life. I spoke with a volunteer at a display of traditional Indian medicinal plants and was surprised to find that these plants included asparagus. He said the type of asparagus we're familiar with grows in North India.
The next day my parents and I visited the two Carnegie museums, which are interconnected. We spent the bulk of our time in the art museum, going through various exhibits. I enjoyed their gallery of Japanese prints and sculpture in particular. The ivory sculptures were particularly fascinating, as the sculptors packed a huge amount of detail into very small pieces. While going through the museum, I tried to make a mental list of all the artists whose paintings impressed me, with the intent of looking them up on Wikipedia later.
We only spent a short amount of time in the Natural History Museum, mainly focusing on their display of minerals. It was fascinating, with a lot of information I either didn't know or had forgotten since grade school.
My favorite was the Conservatory, which gave me a renewed fascination with plants. There were too many great exhibits there to discuss in one blog post, but among my favorites were their orchid room and the butterfly hot house. I understand now why people become obsessed with orchids, as they are among the most beautiful things I have ever seen. The variety of colors was truly amazing.
The butterflies were also beautiful. They were allowed to fly around the hot house interacting with their environment, feeding off the flowers. I actually watched a butterfly stick its proboscis into a flower, feeding itself and pollinating the flower at the same time. You had to be careful walking around for fear of stepping on a butterfly.
They also had a great exhibit on the plants of India. They mainly focused on Southern India, which is a lot wetter and has some beautiful plant life. I spoke with a volunteer at a display of traditional Indian medicinal plants and was surprised to find that these plants included asparagus. He said the type of asparagus we're familiar with grows in North India.
The next day my parents and I visited the two Carnegie museums, which are interconnected. We spent the bulk of our time in the art museum, going through various exhibits. I enjoyed their gallery of Japanese prints and sculpture in particular. The ivory sculptures were particularly fascinating, as the sculptors packed a huge amount of detail into very small pieces. While going through the museum, I tried to make a mental list of all the artists whose paintings impressed me, with the intent of looking them up on Wikipedia later.
We only spent a short amount of time in the Natural History Museum, mainly focusing on their display of minerals. It was fascinating, with a lot of information I either didn't know or had forgotten since grade school.